Lessons Unlearned

By Ben Johnson
FrontPageMagazine.com | May 17, 2004

Although al-Qaeda mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has claimed responsibility for beheading 26-year-old Nick Berg in Iraq, Berg’s father blames another perpetrator: the United States of America. “My son died for the sins of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. This administration did this,” Michael S. Berg recently told Philadelphia radio station KYW-AM.

The elder Berg, a staunch leftist, lashed out at the Bush administration for its Iraq policy both before and after his son’s gruesome dismemberment. Michael Berg was a signatory to International ANSWER’s March 20th “Call to Action.” (“End colonial occupation from Iraq to Palestine and everywhere!”) This anti-American screed – also endorsed by a slew of ultra-leftist groups such as the National Lawyers Guild and the Korea Truth Commission (which claims America started the Korean War) – was intended to mark the first anniversary of the “U.S./U.K. [sic.] invasion of Iraq” and “to demand an end to the Bush administration's ‘Endless War’ plans for global domination.” (Although ANSWER has trimmed its list of endorsees, a poster at FreeRepublic.com published the complete list, including one “Michael S. Berg, teacher, Prometheus Methods Tower Service, Inc., West Chester, PA.”)

Michael Berg has candidly acknowledged that he and his son were very much on different sides of the war question. “He was a Bush supporter,” Berg says of his son. “He looked at (the war) as bringing democracy to a country that didn't have it.” His father has a different view: “I don't think this administration is committed to democracy.”

Michael Berg’s case that Bush killed his son is as follows: Nick Berg went to Iraq seeking work to build the nation’s infrastructure. After a visit in 2003, Nick returned under the impression that he had a contract lined up. However, the deal fell through, and Nick continued to look for work that would have the added benefit of enriching the lives of a people long oppressed. Iraqi police stopped him in Mosul and found an Israeli stamp in his passport, a book on Iran and pieces of Farsi literature in Berg’s possession. Suspicious what a 26-year-old American would be doing in Iraq with neither a support network nor any discernible business prospects, they detained Berg from March 25 until April 6. Berg told UPI reporter Hugo Infante, whom he befriended while they stayed in the same hotel, that the police assumed since he was Jewish and had been to Israel that he was an Israeli Mossad agent. “It was like an adventure for him,” Infante recalls.



The police asked the FBI to double-check Berg’s story, and FBI agents paid three visits to the Bergs’ West Chester home during the 13-day detention. The Bergs filed a lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld on April 5, claiming the U.S. government was holding their son without due process. The Iraqi police released Nick the next day. Four days later, he disappeared, to become a tragic victim of Islamist hatred.



Why then does Berg’s father claim George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld are the real murderers?



Berg elaborated on Boston radio station WBUR last Tuesday, “(W)hat cost my son his life was the fact the U.S. government saw fit to keep him in custody for 13 days without any of due process or civil rights and released him when they were good and ready.”



The Bergs say their son told them he was trying to leave Iraq in March, before his detention, and discussed making travel arrangements as late as April 9. However, they aver, the area had become so dangerous by then that he could not find safe transportation outside the country – and then became the prey of terrorists. And Uncle Sam’s security measures are to blame.



Although all Americans must sympathize with his grief, the problems with his theory are manifold.



For one, Nick Berg was (probably) never in U.S. military custody. According to Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman Dan Senor, it was the Iraqi police and not U.S. military personnel who detained Berg. Although allied with the military, they are distinct entities. While Michael Berg has produced an e-mail saying that the military had his son in custody, it would appear this is a clerical error. Infante, a professional journalist with a world-class news agency, remembers Nick Berg telling him the Iraqi police detained and questioned him, not U.S. forces.



Moreover, whomever detained Nick Berg was simply trying to keep Iraq safe from the people who beheaded him. Although Berg believed Iraqi police suspected him of being an Israeli spy, he also told Infante that their questioning focused on Iran, a known sponsor of the “indigenous” Iraqi uprising. And others being questioned were frequently violent and dangerous. Berg quoted Arlo Guthrie to describe his cellmates as “father-stabbers and mother-rapers.” In other words, Iraqi police detained and questioned anyone who might plausibly be connected to further destabilizing Iraq – and succeeded in corralling many of the worst cases. If police had sufficient manpower and resources, they might have also caught al-Zarqawi and his four murderous cohorts. What Iraq needs is more of the police action Michael Berg decries, not less.



Most damning of all, though, is the revelation that American forces tried to help Nick Berg leave Iraq – and he refused. FBI spokesperson Kelly Shannon told reporters that Bureau agents offered to fly him home on April 10 – the day before he vanished – but Berg turned them down, saying he preferred to travel alone into Kuwait. This certainly fits the picture everyone has painted of Berg: an adventurer, a loner who used his own resources to travel and better the Third World. (Berg had made previous trips to Kenya and Ghana, alone.) Even his brother, David, has admitted this possibility. “Recalling his brother's independent personality, David Berg said such a refusal would not surprise his family,” one account has it.



Why the rush to believe the worst? It seems Michael Berg’s leftist politics have blinded him. Berg has recently berated the entire edifice of Homeland Security legislation. When discussing why he believed the Bush administration was responsible for his son’s death, he said: “It goes further than Donald Rumsfeld. It’s the whole Patriot Act; it’s the whole feeling in this country that rights don’t matter any more because there are terrorists about. Well, in my opinion ‘terrorist’ is just another word like ‘communist’ or ‘witch,’ and it’s a witch hunt….”



Berg blames the Patriot Act (which he calls a “coup d’etat”) for his son’s arrest and detention – as though the act applied to a domestic police investigation in a war-torn nation halfway around the world! Iraq is not ruled by the Patriot Act; it is ruled by the law of the battlefield, and the first law is to stay alive.



One would think, though, recent events would shock his eyes open about the reality of our Islamist enemy. Tragically, should he ever need a reminder that terrorists are very real, he need look no further than his son’s grave. Yet the lesson has not taken. Somehow, his grief has conflated his leftist worldview of the conflict in Iraq and Homeland Security into murder. The mind and body have rejected the loss, and his leftist background has found a convenient scapegoat – not in the barbarians who executed his son – but in the administration that fought like Hell to keep him safe.



Leftist Conspiracy Theories Abound


Like Berg, some on the Left have outrageously blamed the Bush administration for Berg’s beheading – not figuratively but literally. The World Socialist Website – which in recent days has drawn more visitors than the Weekly Standard’s website – has seriously intimated the Bush administration itself murdered Nicholas Berg to deflect attention from the fraternity prank photos emanating from the Abu Ghraib prison:



Anyone who believes it is unthinkable or outrageous to suggest that the American government would sanction having one of its citizens murdered to shore up its fortunes is underestimating the political situation. The Bush administration and elements of the American military hierarchy, media and corporate establishment are indictable war criminals…To them, the life of 26-year-old Nick Berg would have meant nothing.



The grassroots of the Left have seized on the idea with gusto. One poster at the leftist Daily Kos website insisted, “As soon as I heard about this, I knew it was a setup by the Bush Administration…Bush has killed thousands in this war, he wouldn't blink an eye about killing one more to rekindle the same hate America had for Muslims after 9/11.” Another insisted, “I wouldn’t put it past them. I really wouldn’t.”



Indymedia, the website anti-American activists around the world used to plan their “antiwar” rallies, also acts as an “alternate news source” and message board. Those who post on Indymedia represent the activist core of the Left. A participant on their NYC board asserted, “I'm sure it's a CIA operation.” Another chimed in, “i’m quite sure the killing of nick berg was an cia action.” [sic.]



One commenter on Indymedia’s German site added, “I bleieve [sic.] that Al-CIAda is involved and that is why they are covered up.” Another added, “Whoever posted this on behalf of the CIArabs is not fooling anyone. The event was timed appropriately to soften the shock of the upcoming torture videos, and to get Rumsfeld off of the hot-seat.”



The speculation has grown so great that even Pravda printed an opinion piece this weekend entitled, “Could N. Berg’s Execution be Fake?” by Pater Havlasa, editor of the website eBigBang.com. Among his musings, he lies that “N. Berg disappeared when in U.S. custody.” (False! He disappeared four days later, and one day after Americans offered him a one-way ticket back to the City of Brotherly Love.) He also produces this tender observation: “A human head contains 1.5 gallons of blood yet the freshly decapitated head shown in the video is leaking none.” (Does he know Elvis’ middle name is misspelled at Graceland, too?)



Not all conspiracists blame the United States, though. “Professor” Sam Hamod is a former Princeton professor and State Department advisor. He currently edits his own leftist website. Hamod, who also writes editorials for al-Jazeera, recently posted an article condemning Berg’s beheading but casting doubt that Muslims did it. For one thing, he insists Muslims only kill people after a fair and judicious trial (!). No, these are not Muslims. “(I)t may also be that this was perpetrated by Israeli agents, who have been operating in Iraq since the American invasion and have been advisors and combatants for Blackwater, and for the U.S. military, especially in interrogation techniques…Remember also, many Israelis speak Arabic as well as Arabs themselves.” (Curiously, Hamod earlier complained the murderers’ chant of “Allahu Akbar” – “Allah is great!” – seemed “strained.”) You see, the gentle poet tells us, it wasn’t Bush – it was the filthy Jews.



It is among the kooks of the Left that Michael Berg has chosen to find peace over his son’s death. Ironically, this is where Nick Berg’s memory has found its greatest detractors.



Leftists Desecrate Nick Berg’s Memory, Too


While most left-wingers have been careful to condemn the murder of an innocent American, the leftists who inhabit the fever swamps of International ANSWER and the antiwar lobby have no qualms about telling the world how they really feel: Nick Berg got what was coming to him.



One poster at the San Diego Indymedia site, responding to the idea that al-Zarqawi beheaded an “innocent,” wrote:



Helloooo!!! Are you on the same Planet as the rest of us? There was nothing innocent about someone going into a country to profit off an illegal war…The guy got beheaded because he was somewhere he should not have been.



The writer then added, “Americans are like cockroaches!”



Posters at Portland Indymedia bizarrely connected Berg’s beheading to the passage of a tax cut bill through the Senate. One participant referred to Berg as a “poor bastard (or an invader who has met with traditional social justice depending on your point of view I suppose).” He went on to call Berg’s death “pure money in the bank for George W this November.”



Nor has the hatred been confined to America. A particularly vile message on Indymedia’s German site gleefully displays no less than eight pictures of Nick Berg’s severed head next to the words, “Nick Berg has his head cut off.” Below that, the messenger wrote twice, “Nick Berg a private mercenary who went to Iraq to help the American Empire install a puppet government gets his head cut off for his crimes.” [sic.]



The Irish also got in on the act on Indymedia. “Salah” wrote, “Nick Berg was part of the US led coalition which is attempting to bleed Iraq dry, with no concern for the effects on the Iraqi people. Whether civilian or not, he was scouting for the leftovers of a devastating campaign which began decades ago with British occupation through to US led sanctions and this current illegal invasion…Until the middle-east is free from brutal occupations there will not be, and should not be unilateral peace.” [sic.]



Another writer added, “I find it very difficult to feel sorry for Mr. Berg when the link below shows what american [sic.] intervention has done for the children of Iraq…So before you go harping on about how despicable it was for one yankee to have their head hacked off, think about how despicable it is for the government of your country to destroy the genes of these children and of many generations yet to come.”



“Caliban” offered, “C'mon the guy was just another bit of collateral damage in the Clash of Civilzations.....”



When a writer pointed out the obvious – that Nick Berg was killed by Islamists because he was both American and carrying a Jewish prayer shawl – “Stan” sympathetically replied, “Avi, the holocaust must be starting again! Lets go and kill some more palestinians!” [sic.]



If all holds true to form, it will only be a matter of time before Ted Rall draws a cartoon calling Nick Berg a moron and berating his grief-stricken family.



These are the hateful nutcases Michael Berg signed up with when he signed the International ANSWER statement. (Incidentally, ANSWER’s most recent campaign is to “Defend Dr. Hatem Bazian,” the professor who called for an “intifada” in America.) His son, Nick, saw a nation that needed his help and tried to better it. Michael Berg said of the killer, “They did not know what they were doing. They killed their best friend.” On the contrary. Nick Berg was a friend of a free and democratic Iraq. The Islamists knew exactly what they were doing, because they are Nick Berg’s enemies – and ours. The best tribute a father could pay to his son’s memory is to stop apologizing for those who killed him, associating with those who revile him and antagonizing those who seek to avenge him.